Cooperation in social dilemmas is often challenged by negative noise, or unintended errors, such that the actual behavior is less cooperative than intended-for example, arriving later than intended for a meeting due to an unusual traffic jam. The present research was inspired by the notion that doing a little more for one's interaction partner, which may be movitvated by empathetic feelings, can effectively reduce the detrimental effects of ''negative noise,'' or unintended incidents of noncooperation. Consistent with hypotheses, negative noise exhibited detrimental effects on cooperation, but such effects were absent when empathy-motivated cooperation was present. We conclude that empathy has broad benefits for social interaction, in that it can be an effective tool for coping with misinterpreted behaviors, thereby maintaining or enhancing cooperation. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Human behavior is universally guided by social norms or unspoken rules of social behavior. One such rule is reciprocity, or response to another's action with that same action (Gouldner, 1960;Perugini, Gallucci, Presaghi, & Ercolani, 2003). The idiom ''an eye for an eye'' is a colloquial expression of this social norm. The norm of reciprocity guides human behavior in most types of interpersonal situations, from families to the political arena. One such situation is a dyadic social dilemma. Dyadic social dilemmas are situations in which self-interest is at odds with collective or long-term interest. When these situations involved repeated interactions, people can often effectively pursue both self-interest and collective interest by adopting the behavioral norm of reciprocity, as it serves to maximize outcomes without making the user vulnerable to exploitation by others (Axelrod, 1984). For example, tit-for-tat (TFT) is a strictly reciprocal strategy in that the previous behavior of an individual is always matched during the next encounter by the reciprocator (Axelrod, 1984). TFT appears to be successful at maximizing outcomes for at least two reasons: It is forgiving, and retaliatory (Axelrod, 1984). TFT is forgiving because after a cycle of noncooperation if the other cooperates, the strategy will follow suit. It is invulnerable to exploitation because it is retaliatory-if the other actor defects, TFT will reciprocate the defection. Thus, TFT is a reactive strategy that does not change behavior unless there is a change in the other's behavior. If the other actor always defects, TFT will reciprocate defection regardless of the long-term costs.One unfortunate consequence of reciprocal behavior in dyadic social dilemmas is an increase in noncooperative actions (i.e., conflict escalation). That is, when one or both partners intentionally or unintentionally make a noncooperative choice, the result will be noncooperative interaction, or escalating conflict. Noncooperation will increase within a strictly reciprocal environment when only one actor pursues a competitive strategy-the so-called ''bad apple '' effect (Colman,

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This article presents two studies that address Axelrod’s (1984) prescription to not worry about the outcomes that others receive in a mixed-motive situation. The first study demonstrated that people do attend and react to others’ outcomes, with people whose outcomes were of a lesser magnitude than the opponent being uncooperative and people with greater-magnitude outcomes being very cooperative. This was true even though own and other outcomes were linearly equivalent. The second study showed that dispositional envy can predict rate of cooperation and that referent cognitions theory can be applied to help alleviate the impact of differing outcomes, both by making amends for small-magnitude outcomes at the end of the game (amelioration) and by providing a reasonable explanation for why the differences in outcomes exist (justification), although the former intervention was ineffective with people with high levels of dispositional envy. Discussion focuses on the role of mental simulations in the reduction of envy effects.

This study assessed the impact of social value orientation on the ability of a reciprocal choice strategy to induce high rates of cooperative behavior in a prisoner's dilemma. Prosocials, competitors, and individualists played against reciprocal strategies for which delay of reciprocation of both cooperation and noncooperation were orthogonally manipulated. As predicted, individualists cooperated most frequently against Tit-for-tat, competitors when retaliation for noncooperation was delayed, and prosocials when their cooperative choice was immediately reciprocated. In addition, it was found that prosocials began "behavioral assimilation" as early as the second of four five-trial blocks and that changes in competitors' rate of cooperation over time were determined by immediacy of reciprocating cooperation.

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